Love of Cars and Roberto Clemente Led Franklin Native to Once-in-a-Lifetime Restoration


FRANKLIN, Pa. (EYT) – A love of cars and a love of Roberto Clemente led Franklin native Randy Dye to a unique purchase and once-in-a-lifetime restoration.

(Photo courtesy of Randy Dye and clementecar.com)

At an auction preceding the 2017 MLB All0-Star game in Miami, Dye, who owns a car dealership in Daytona Beach, Fla., purchased a 1972 Special Edition 440 Magnum Charger that was presented to Clemente for winning the 1971 National League World Series MVP Award.

“I have restored a lot of cars in my life,” Dye said. “I don’t know if I want to do many more. But it is a rare occasion that you can restore a car that is No. 1 a vintage that you appreciate from the Mopar Muscle era and also belonged to your boyhood hero. It made all the sense in the world.”

After purchasing the car for $105,570 – a price Dye said was more than he would have liked to spend but less than he would have – the next question was what he was going to do with it.

The restoration came first.

“The goal was to restore it like the day they handed Roberto and Vera (Clemente’s wife) the keys, at least make it that good,” Dye said. “Chrysler, at the time, was building cars in mass quantity, they were mass produced. This was a singularly reproduced. We can make it a lot more detailed than the assembly line.”

Dye said he is a perfectionist when it comes to cars, and he wanted to uphold Clemente’s standard of excellence.

“Knowing all the Clemente fans who appreciate his baseball life and the benevolent life he lived, you know people are going to be expecting a lot and looking. Roberto is held in the highest esteem. You have that on your shoulders. You want to meet the fan expectation. I think, and we hope, people will find that to be true with the car.”

Dye said it took him a little over 10 months to restore the car.

“We have restored almost all the original parts, restored the parts that we had,” Dye said. “Everything works, that is important. We can’t do the car and it not work right. That is important.”

According to Dye, he added what he calls “easter eggs” to the car.

“It does look like it did when he received it,” Dye said. “I did some things, we’ll call them ‘easter eggs’, things like special dates, unique numbers, certain things that were important to Roberto and his family. There are some neat stories that accompany it, but they don’t stand out.”

Now that the car is restored, Dye said he wants to use it to continue Clemente’s legacy of charitable giving.

“We have started a 501 C-3 charity entity,” Dye said. “We want to do things initially to help kids that are hunger. The Clemente family has pretty much lived the entire life of the car from 1972 or early 1973 (Clemente died in a plane crash on his way to delivering food and other goods to earthquake-riddled Nicaragua on Dec. 31, 1972) doing these things. We are just helping them. It’s just a little piece of what they have been doing their entire life.”

Dye said he first found out about the car visiting the Roberto Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh.

“I was approached by Duane Reider of the Roberto Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh about five or six years ago about getting (the car),” Dye said. “It never came about. It became pretty clear (at the time) they weren’t emotionally ready to put it on display. When I talked to Roberto Clemente Jr. he said that was the hardest piece for them to let go of.”

Dye’s first charitable appearance with the car will be a fundraiser Saturday, June 23, back in his hometown of Franklin when he joins forces with his brother, Jeff, to raise money for a new fence at the Little League field at Miller-Sibley Park.

The event will be held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Franklin Junior-Senior High School Auditorium, and tickets at $21. The price includes food and drinks – ballpark style – and can be purchased at the Franklin branch of the Clarion County Community Bank, at either of Franklin’s Shop-n-Save stores or by calling Jeff Dye at 814-673-1044.


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